WHAT IS TIME?

We hear sounds, see colours, feel textures and it’s certain that all of these are perceived by our sense. But how do we do know that time is actually passing by? We can’t see it, hear it, touch it or feel it, hence it’s definite that none of the senses are used to perceive time.

Time is experienced subjectively. Without change or difference there is no notion of time. We wouldn’t realise if time is passing by if there were no succession of events or activities taking place. For e.g. – Changing of the sun’s position makes us realise how much time has gone by. It’s a man-made concept and is said to be only for practical purpose or experience. Depending on who we are and what we are experiencing, the speed of time varies for each one of us. For e.g.- A child feels that time is passing by really fast when he/she’s having a great time with their friends but the same child would feel that time is taking years and years to pass by when they’re bored in a lecture.

We segregate time in three phases that is the past, present and future. The sense of ‘now’ makes us feel that past has already happened and is fixed where as future hasn’t occurred yet and that none of them are real. But physics teaches us something really remarkable, which is that Past and Future are always found in the current moment. They are implicit in the present. Everything exists now. We experience everything now and not in the past or the future, and everything that happened yesterday becomes a memory.

I’d like to think that our present selves is a store of our past experiences and our future hopes and not just existing in ‘this very moment’.